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Students Sue Anti-Plagiarism Service
jazzbazzfazz writes "It seems that some students in Virginia are not happy with the anti-plagiarism service Turnitin. The company checks prose submitted by its customers for signs that it has been copied in whole or part by comparing it to a large database of works that it maintains. Trouble is, it also adds the submitted prose to its files and stores it for use by the company in future scans, which the students feel is illegal use of their copyrighted materials. I think they've got an excellent case, especially since they seem to have prepared for this eventuality: they're A-students, never been accused of plagiarism, and they formally copyrighted their papers prior to their submission to Turnitin."
First post! Oh shit, I plagiarized this.
I realize that it does indeed violate their copyright, but as a student, wouldn't you want your paper in their catalog so that some lazy student can't make it through school by plagiarizing YOUR work?
I don't know about these students, but when I was in school nothing bothered me more than students asking to see my answers, cheat off my tests, or read my essays for 'inspiration'.
But then again, it is a violation all the same. I say if it bothers them, go for it the law is on their side.
Sometimes the best solution is to stop wasting time looking for an easy solution.
Do the terms of service say anything about assigning the copyright to Turnitin? Or perhaps expressly allowing this use? If so, is that enforceable given that the school (probably) required students to use Turnitin?
If not, does this constitute fair use? I would argue that it doesn't, since Turnitin is doing it for commercial gain.
(IANAL)
Last year a big group of people submitted rough drafts to our instructor, they were all run through the system. Then, we submitted our final papers, they were run through the system too, but the second time the class had 30 students that were shown to plagiarize. It really needs work, I understand what they are doing, but the implementation steps on a lot of toes.
Those who know, do not speak. Those who speak, do not know. ~Lao Tzu
This is identical to Google Book search. You may copy text for all sorts of protected purposes.
I hope it is thrown out while leaving plenty of egg on the students' faces.
This really pisses me off. I did all that work and it gets submitted, without prior consent sometimes, to a database for a company to make a profit off of while I get nothing in return? Of course, it all depends on the university as well. For example, I'm doing a year abroad. It shocked me that before coming to this university, we had to basically sign over copyright to the university for anything we created while students here. Essentially, every single project or paper I have turned in for a grade to this university now belongs to them. I raised the issue with the director of the program and she looked at me as if I was some sort of freak because I actually like retaining the rights to any content I create, giving it out as I see fit.
Can you show me a cite that backs up your position or did you just pull that out of your ass? That might be the case in Canada (I noticed the .ca email address), but this is a case in the states.
I signed no contract in primary or secondary school that said my work is the property of the school, and copyright law has no provision that makes such a theory true. The closest thing that comes to mind is works for hire. And I don't think any copyright attorney would argue such an asinine position.
I didn't want that god damn bot spidering me anymore so I went to the URL they offer during the crawl: http://www.turnitin.com/robot/crawlerinfo.html
Right there it tells you how to turn the fucking thing off.
User-agent: TurnitinBot
Disallow: /
One of the McLean High plaintiffs wrote a paper titled "What Lies Beyond the Horizon." It was submitted to Turnitin with instructions that it not be archived, but it was, the lawsuit says.
So, instead of suing first, I assume that these students sent a certified letter demanding the content be removed from the database? The article doesn't specifically say, but I have a feeling that's not what happened.
It was copyrighted the day you fixed it to a tangible medium.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
It ususally means having registered it with the government. The usual terminology is "registered copyright" rather than "formally", but other coverage makes it clear what they did.
A "clear case" of fair use? It's copying the entire work, and it's doing it for commercial purposes. That's the worst possible result on two of the four criteria, before we even start on the others.
And how is this at all the same as Google's book search?
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
As an English major (I type poorly so excuse typos) I can tell you first hand that Turnitin is horrid. Previous posts have talked about how submitting a draft and then your final shows your final as being plagiarized. But it's worse than that. It hits on common word usage, simple three word statements, hell even cliche statements that may be 2 words long, it marks them.
To make matters worse a large number of professors are starting to use this and treat it like the gospel. I know several students accused now of plagiarism, falsely, because of this system.
I am lucky this semester and have 2 professors who realize this and in a move to stop plagiarism have taken other actions, such as asking us to turn in all of our rough drafts and print/copy out our sources and attach it all to our final work, something you can still cheat on but are much less likely too.
Personally I don't know anyone who has ever cheated on a paper. I suppose with some of the fluff classes and electives some may have because those classes are a low priority, but by and large plagiarism is no where near as big a problem as these people make it out to be. High school maybe, but not in higher education.
...and they formally copyrighted their papers prior to their submission to Turnitin. What exactly does that mean? I was under the impression that the mere act of creating the work rendered it "copyrighted".From http://www.copyright.gov/circs/circ1.html#cr:
If registration is made within 3 months after publication of the work or prior to an infringement of the work, statutory damages and attorney's fees will be available to the copyright owner in court actions. Otherwise, only an award of actual damages and profits is available to the copyright owner.
"Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence" - Carl Sagan
Huh? The bold part is irrelevant to the lawsuit. The students are protesting the use of their papers not random communication with iParadigms. As such, the terms of service seem to clearly exclude student papers from the all-encompassing rights grab of the rest of the paragraph.
Anybody who's an English major presumably wants to be one because they enjoy writing (due to the "do you want fries with that?" job prospects). Therefore, they wouldn't want to cheat anyway. In contrast, the types of majors that people who care about money rather than the subject go into, like management, probably have a much higher incidence of cheating.
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
I don't think the fair use defense is going to hold water. The situations in which you can claim fair use are pretty slim; a for-profit service, who is obviously deriving some economic benefit by using somebody else's copyrighted paper (by adding it to their database) is probably not going to qualify. I'm not sure what harm the students can claim, but if they have any decent lawyers at all, they'll find some way of doing it.
I actually wouldn't mind if it was covered under Fair Use, because I think that's something we could really do with broadening, but the law as written today wouldn't cover it.
Now, what I think will happen, is that Turnitin will advise its clients (schools, universities, etc.) that in order to use the service, they must obtain a release from students that includes permission to upload the files. This way, they'll just offload the responsibility for copyright infringement off on the schools, who will just force students to release their work, or refuse to give them a grade.
I don't think it'll be very long before, when you apply to a college or university, you also sign away all rights to everything you think, say, or do while you're there, in perpetuity, in any medium whatsoever. They'll just make it part of the admissions contract, and that will be it -- at least for private schools and colleges. I'm not sure what legal grounds you would get into with public schools, and whether they could force students to do that or not.
But I think the students in the Turnitin case, have just as much if not more grounds than the plaintiffs in the similar cases of book publishers vs. Google. (Actually, I think Google has a much better Fair Use defense than Turnitin does.)
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
The problem is that the teachers/staff have no rights to give to Turnitin. The students hold all rights to their own works and the students were never asked to agree to those clauses. I think that it is a clear violation of copyright.
The post made with 100% recycled electrons
Hopefully in your "really great" papers you used the correct phrase, "all for naught." Keep up the good work.
Given that many, many teachers give out broadly similar assignments all over the country, how many years it will be until most possible ways of talking, say, of what Dante meant in a certain canto in the Inferno, will be in the database and will make it impossible to write a paper without being suspected of plagiarizing? Especially if the system runs with a very low threshold (say, 3-4 words in a row that are the same = plagiarizing)
It would really be interesting if all the published books on one particular subject (again, say, the Divine Comedy) were submitted to this service and a check was run about just how much 'plagiarizing' and 'original thinking' there is going around...
-- the cake is a lie
This is already the case. My 17th century British Literature Professor stopped using Turnitin.com because it became obvious, every idea relating to Milton had already been expressed in a million different ways. Just because an idea was original to a student, didn't mean that same idea hadn't been expressed previously by another. He told us every single paper he received had gotten negative hits from Turnitin.com because Milton had just been discussed to death.
When I was at university, a fellow student was almost expelled for plaigarism, after turning in a copy of his own homework. Here's the deal:
This was the second time he had taken the class, and he still had all his coursework from the prior semester. Instead of redoing one particular assignment, he simply turned in what he had done for the same assignment the prior semester (for which he had scored well). The professor gave him a failing grade and reported him for plaigarism.
His argument: He had done the work himself, he should be able to turn it in.
The school's argument: Per the contract, all work submitted by students becomes the intellectual property of the university. Upon first submission, the intellectual property rights were transferred to the university. Upon second submission, the work was now in violation of plaigarism rules, as it consisted entirely of intellectual property belonging to the university.
In the end, the schoolboard decided on leniency, and allowed him a short period to repeat the assignment, but made it well-known that this would not be tolerated in the future.
I am SO confused. I thought information wanted to be free? I thought we don't mind other people "sharing" data. I thought the person who puts their hands on the digital data is the one who decides what the creator should, or shouldn't be entitled to. I thought the copyright infringer is the one who gets to determine what sort of distribution methods are, or are not viable.
These students should be plenty happy. They get what they're "entitled" to out of their work: (good) grades. It's just greedy to be concerning yourself with the idea that some commercial entity which enables professors to MORE AFFORDABLY provide you your education (by way of spending less time simply checking for plagiarism) should be forking over some portion of their profits.
I know this'll be an unpopular viewpoint. Whatever side of copyright infringement a group of young student-types are on at the moment is the "right" one. My mistake.
When you hit grad-student levels and someone "steals" papers you'd otherwise publish, thereby depriving you of your livelihood, we'll talk. Otherwise hand in your damned homework, get your grades, pass you class, get your degree and go get a job.
"Oh no... he found the
My wife is an adjunct professor at a university, and she pretty routinely nails at least 1 or 2 students for blatant plagiarism per class.
She doesn't use any special software or tools though, it's almost always obvious, such as when a student suddenly starts spelling words correctly they have never spelled right all semester, or using coherent sentence structures, etc, and usually googling a few snippets of the questionable paper turns up the plagiarized sources. (Yes, people just copy/paste from wikipedia and other sources without citing it and try to turn it in as their own.)
So, basically, this tool kind of sounds like it's more for professors that are too lazy, unobservant, or overworked to actually recognize their own students writing after a whole semester. And I guess for busting the genuinely clever plagiarists who are buying papers all semester long that they know haven't been published elsewhere online.
If that was the school's argument, it was pretty weak. If the school was in the US, the work could not become the university's property without an explicit written transfer; university policy is not sufficient. Further, even if turning in his own work was technically copyright infringement, it would not be plaigerism. They aren't the same thing. Plaigerism is the use of another's work without giving credit for it. You can plaigerize work in the public domain, and you can infringe copyright while giving full credit.
Of course, university disciplinary boards aren't known for their attention to fairness and justice, so I'm not surprised.
It's not fair use if it adversely affects your market, and since your market is students wishing to cheat on their term papers, it's pretty drastic... so there's your damages.
The market need not be plagiarists, it could just as easily be the market for competing plagiarism detection services.
I once got into a discussion about Turnitin with a good college professor of mine. The specific program she was teaching required use of Turnitin - but she didn't use it. She told the entire class, directly, that Turnitin isn't how they find cheaters - it's by reading the students paper and _seeing_ obvious changes in style/diction. Some students still do "cut & paste" plagiarism, though it's a lot rarer now. "Cut, reword, & paste" plagiarism is still not noticed by Turnitin. People must always remember that "cut & paste" plagiarism is only *one* form of plagiarism. Technically, it's illegal to take a fact without citing it. Turnitin fails here as well. Most importantly, however, are that you can have false positives, or just plain database glitches. There was one fellow who was brought in because Turnitin red flagged his paper. Thankfully, he realized it wasn't even his paper - there had been a database glitch. A less observant student & less comprehending staff could have *ruined* that student. These students aren't suing out of want for money (well, they might be for a bit), it's because the system shouldn't be required and, frankly, can cause harm. No system of courts, be it in school or in life, should find even one innocent guilty - even if it means a hundred guilty go free (I should cite this, but I fail to recall who said it).
Don't take this wrong, but I think I want to be in your wife's class. I can plagiarize with the best of them and if my punishment is to be nailed by the teacher....
Lucky you. In a rather dull undergrad level archaeology course, I was required to submit a term project which basically needed to be a method/program/etc. for a "novel" invention/improvement for archaeologists.
The professor passed out papers to be submitted with the final work which assigned rights to the University. I refused to sign. I made what I thought was an intelligent and calm case for my point -- immediately shot down, and received an automatic F (even though I submitted the work, and suspecting there to be a problem did so at the faculty office where I received signed proof it was submitted on time).
While most ideas were probably stupid in the great scheme of things, this was obviously a fishing expedition by the professor to hope to get a great idea.
Later, another professor wanted to use my idea from the paper. Lacking automatic license, we discussed it, discussed the other professor's actions, etc. The end result was the legal team for the school voiding all that professor's agreements under fear of liability for unjust enrichment and other abuse of power type of laws -- and his tenure was revoked. And, ta dah -- the Chair of the department adjusted my grade.
But, I did happily sign a LIMITED license for the University to use my program free-of-charge on that specific project --- when I was asked, explained what it was to be used for, and treated with the respect that just because I was an undergrad doesn't mean they have everything and I have nothing.
That being said -- clearly it's not automatic that the school gets rights to the work, nor can you be forced to assign rights unless the school exchanged something for them (or it was a condition of admission, etc.). But, obviously there needs to be SOME wiggle room to allow academic growth (should I be able to sue because my professor gave my paper to someone else because he thought it was either really good or really bad and it wasn't implied he would be sharing them?)
It all comes down to respect and asking permission, if you ask me. Given the option of 1- using Turnitin and getting a grade quicker and not having to submit rough drafts, research, etc. -- or 2- Submitting 2 rough drafts and documentation of research with your paper --- most students would probably use Turnitin. But they've been given a fair choice in my example, and if they disagree with Turnitin's policies they are free to not use it.
"but doesn't create a hugely cutthroat competition in the upper echelons of a class"
Maybe I missed something, but I thought we were trying to teach our children something positive. Do we really want to raise our kids to be even more confrontational, aggressive, mean spirited and anti-social? I would say no.
As an aside to this, I went to a polytechnic that involved a large number of randomly assigned group projects. Basically this threw the successful and underachievers into the same bucket. This whole exercise was basically meant to neutralize a self performance based metric into a group based success role. Teams that did well with each-other would always do better than mavericks, no matter how talented they were. The team working really gave a reflective picture of how you deal with people after those years of school are long over with. You have some who slack off and bring the group down. You have others that push hard to get their work done. Now the onus was on group members to either lift or tear apart each other.
And isn't that whats really important? We plagiarize through life, most of the time we never even think of the backs we're standing on. I would rather deal with solving the problem in a more creative way (like heavy group projects) instead of using technological means to force you to succeed. Some people will never 'succeed' in the way that society places on them. Are they worthless? If so, then we're not making very good use of our resources now, are we?
I you just can't implement something like the above and plagiarism is 'rampant', I see nothing wrong with an anti-plagiarism system as long as there are processes to deal with false positives and that everyone involved knows that it exists.
Bye!
The student pays to go to school, not the other way around. Students hire teachers to teach them. I don't see how turning in a paper becomes "work for hire".
After 3 days without programming, life becomes meaningless
- The Tao of Programming
You obviously haven't seen his wife.
Ah, ideal world utopias... how cute.
Let me tell you about those group assignments: _no_ university, college, or polytechnic _ever_ had assignments complex enough and under enough time pressure to actually _require_ cooperation. They're simple stuff doable by average students, who've been given 20x the necessary time for either to do it on his own. A really good student tends to plough through that assignment in an afternoon or two... and usually ends up having to.
What really happens in those groups is that you end up teamed with various clones of Wally (from the Dilbert comics), who can't be arsed to do _anything_ for the project.
E.g., take it from experience, in the first year in college I ended up having pretty much my own sidekick, sorta like Batman and Robin. His claim to glory was looking over my shoulder when I was at a computer in the lab. Now I don't think I was some kind of genius, but somehow I ended up with some "the great Moraelin" kinda reputation pretty fast. This guy ended up being "the great Wally" because he was with me all the time, so people _assumed_ some kind of teamwork was involved. It looked like pair programming, I guess, although that guy never actually offered any actual advice or information or ever coded anything for that matter.
Don't get me wrong, I'm a nerd, so I'll take any kind of popularity or friend, if it's available. I didn't mind having my own fan following around.
By the time we get our first group assignment, it seemed only natural to pair him with me. After all, everyone could swear that we're already such a great team. Let me tell you, the guy did _nothing_. Admittedly, I did do a stunt and come up with a far more grandiose idea than the professor wanted to give our team. (Hey, I must keep that "the great Moraelin" reputation.) But I asked him to do only some small trivial parts of it, merely token so I can say with a straight face that he did something too. To get an idea, by the end I had reduced it to asking him to write a function that draws two perpendicular lines on the screen. _That_ trivial. He didn't even do that. In fact other than reassuring me that he's working on it and almost ready, he didn't do anything at all. I ended up writing it all by myself.
The same theme repeated throughout college, even if with different people. I still wonder what had happened to my first sidekick. I think he wasn't around any more by the next year. No problem, I got other sidekicks. I even had a sorta girlfriend based on just doing her assignments too. She never even saw the program when we were teamed for such a group assignment, until we presented it to the professor. Wasn't interested in seeing it either. (And tbh, it didn't bother me much:) Smart girl otherwise, mind you, but, you know, why bother working when someone else can do all your assignments?
Getting teamed with another guy on another occasion, well, got me another guy pretending to be my best friend. He did at least paint about two pages of flowcharts after the fact, though, before getting bored with that too. In the meantime the "girlfriend" had been teamed up with someone else, but, hey, I got to do their work too, although I wasn't on their team.
So basically, please spare me the bull about learning to function in a team. I've yet to see even one team in college which actually worked as a team. Invariably it was one "maverick" doing all the work, and a bunch of Wallys doing little more than moral support, if even that.
Well, ok, so it may be a useful lesson for later. I was reading a study that said that about 3 out of 4 programmers can't actually program, or don't program, and just find some way or another to live as parasites off others. Ranging from "oh, you're my best friend, please help me", to taking all credit and trying to discredit the real worker to the boss, to being the boss's personal pet, to God knows what other creative ways. Yeah, you can get used to that kind of people in those group assignments, but that's about it.
But even that's not as useful as you may think. Yeah, it taught some of us geeks to be "good team players", meaning: to not mind a Wally just hanging around and taking credit. But it also taught whole generations of Wallys that that's one way to get the job done.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
I'm a hiring manager in a Fortune 500 company.
Yes, we expect a degree, unless you're so incredibly smart that you can produce without one. (And almost all of you who think that you are that smart are simply wrong. Formal education tends to give you the foundation on which all technology is built, and it's rare to find someone who 'gets it' without going to college.)
No, we DO NOT CARE where you went to school, as long as it's accredited. What we care about is:
a) Can you do the technical work we need done?
b) Can you communicate clearly? (Orally and in writing.)
c) Are you decently groomed? (So that others are not made uncomfortable by your appearance.)
d) Do you know when to SHUT UP? (Being right about a technical issue is nice, but just because you are right you don't have the freedom to tell people they are idiots.)
e) Can you see the big picture? (Sometimes there is considerable business value in building something other than the "perfect" solution, and we want to be able to pay you to build something technically "lame" because it's the best way for us to make more money.)
f) Are you a leader in your chosen field? Are you willing to learn leadership in a broader sense?
We can always hire someone who knows how to flip bits. We are looking for people who can flip bits and be tolerable to be around. There are plenty of technically competent jerks who think they know it all. We'll let others have them, and we'll hire the people who are smart in more than one area.
The key is turning brainpower into systems and applications that make the company cheaper to run or facilitate making more money. That's what we care about. We don't care where your parchment came from.
But Herr Heisenberg, how does the electron know when I'm looking?